This has been a seismic week for the United Kingdom, with the reverberations from last week’s vote to leave the European Union felt around the world. Many of you who receive the Guardian Weekly overseas will doubtless have been looking on with astonishment. For those of us caught in the eye of the storm, it’s been every bit as frenetic and unsettling as it must appear from the outside.
We have produced an especially expanded edition of the paper this week, in which you will find 14 pages devoted to the referendum fallout – though it’s no exaggeration to say the paper could have been filled in its entirety with top-quality writing on the subject. On the cover, Larry Elliott asks whether the vote signals an end for globalisation. Inside, John Harris reveals why a Britain riddled with social inequality has finally toppled over. We tour the UK, visiting the English county of Lincolnshire with its large population of immigrant farmworkers and high proportion of leave voters, and explore crucial ramifications for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
On the Comment side, Natalie Nougayrède foresees dark times ahead for the EU. Jonathan Freedland paints a diminished picture of little Britain. The Observer’s Andrew Rawnsley and Nick Cohen pick over David Cameron’s withered prime ministerial legacy and a trail of unsettling lies and toxicity left behind by the victorious leave campaign.
From wherever you are reading, I am very keen to receive your letters and thoughts on the week’s events, and how we have covered them. Please do email them to us here.
Elsewhere we are able to enjoy the brighter sides of human endeavour. In the news, we cover the end to Colombia’s 52-year civil war, the liberation of Falluja from Isis forces and cast an eye ahead to Australia’s elections this weekend. In the Weekly Review we consider the nature of taste, and how we come to like the things we like. In Discovery, we hear about the hitherto-overlooked bathroom cabinet drugs that may help defeat cancer. Culture visits Sweden, where Ikea has opened a museum devoted to its iconic flatpack soft furnishings.
Recently I had a chance to visit the Imperial War Museum’s superb Holocaust exhibition in London. It was shocking to be reminded how fast and far Germany’s politics spiralled downward in the space of a few short years during the 1920s and 1930s, a period of history still within our lifetimes. With reports of racist and xenophobic abuse in the UK rising steeply following last week’s referendum, it left me wondering how the atmosphere of populist fervour on Europe’s streets back then would compare with the mood today.
As the Guardian’s editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner, pointed out this week, these are worrying, troubling days. I personally cannot recall a time when it has felt more important to keep world events in their true perspective, an aim that underpins our thinking every week as we put the Guardian Weekly together.
I hope you find the edition insightful – and thank you for continuing to support our journalism.
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